


Necrosis

by bulelo



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Badass Katara (Avatar), Bloodbending, Enemies to Friends, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Protective Sokka (Avatar), Reincarnation, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Toph Being Awesome, What Have I Done, What-If, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-03-24 07:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13806507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulelo/pseuds/bulelo
Summary: For the longest time, blood remained a tool of combat. It was dangerous, the voices even more so. But when plans for a quiet life fall through and she begins to save lives, Wanli embarks on a journey to revolutionize the medical field and give meaning to her new existence. For though blood can easily destroy the body, it is also the way through which it heals. [SI/OC, bloodbending]





	1. Choices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hi friends! Welcome to Necrosis. Be warned, there will be unsettling concepts and trauma evoked in my storytelling; I'll put warnings when they apply.
> 
> Furthermore, though this introduction references The Legend of Korra, it does not require any knowledge of the series moving forward. Wanli's mentioned son will only be used as a plot device to haunt her. However he is, in fact, actually a canon antagonist for TLOK. Just thought it'd be fun to throw one of my favorite bad guys in here.
> 
> Comments would be encouraging; be a vocal reader. With that said, thank you for stopping by and enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing but Wanli, Engi, and original ideas.
> 
> Edit: 12/27/18

"The axe forgets; the tree remembers."

—African Proverb

**Underground Red Lotus Prison, Northern Earth Kingdom. 171 AG.**

It ends with her head on the ground and her mouth making room for the blood: thick, massive, absolutely despicable. It ends with the tissues of her abdomen crumpling with the pressure of an air-bent wound. It ends with the last Avatar poisoned and paralyzed.

And as always, it ends with  _him_.

A moment ago, when Wanli tried to release the prisoner and foil his plans, her son shot a bullet of air through her. The wind now echoes between the ground and the space where her stomach should be. Fists still vibrating from the power of his lethal strike, Zaheer falls to his knees in shock and cradles his mother. The warmth of his body does little to ease Wanli's pain.

"M-mother, why did you interfere?" he asks. "We were so close to the end. So close to eradicating the absolute power."

Behind them, the shackled Avatar Korra observes with a mix of horror and pity. She shares a tragic look with Wanli, an unspoken understanding. The two women know the weight of reincarnation like no other: one destined to lose her past lives, and the other to remember her sins forever. Wanli can hear the roar of the girl's heart pump through her brain. The sound is wild and desperate and full of promise, too young to die in some hole in the wall.

She peers into the face of her baby boy then, his anguished olive green eyes and the tears splitting his worn face. Wanli can feel his blood, too, torrents of heat flooding his temple and palms. Zaheer has suffered so much loss, and now, his heart beats ferociously for a dying parent.

There is nothing that hurts her more than this. She carries a duality of fury and love for an irredeemable man; now, she must pay for it. Motherhood and death are one and the same to her. The reckoning has come once more.

"You could be… better..." the woman whispers. "But… you never… change."

_That makes the two of us._

Wanli is awake long enough to see the very moment her son loses his mind, before the distorted screams for forgiveness die with her again.

* * *

She once trusted time to be linear, proceeding perfectly into eternity like yarn drawn through a loop. But this isn't the first time Wanli is wrong; it won't be the last, either.

It is so cold down in the dark. She always forgets what this sunless world feels like, the pang of hunger for the sky and all its good work. In the all-encompassing womb of the afterlife, she curls into the fetal position her son left her in. It is the same one her first husband used to provoke after one too many drinks and a lightning backhand.

The sound of water laps at her fragmented conscience, carrying her soul through the motions of memory like the tendrils of a jellyfish. She has lost track of the rebirths now—seventy? eighty? hundred? —but the number is irrelevant. Adrift in the ink sea, the mother prays this is the last time she'll have to bring her son to justice. The final failure.

It never gets easier to look at him. Wanli knows the terror he is capable of executing a hundred times over. His anarchist philosophies never change; plotting the death of the Avatar is only the first step. To end the ultimate spiritual authority, but at what cost?

She blames herself for being a defective guardian angel. She's the reason why he turns out worse in some of the timelines, after all. Her avoidance of him, the way she'll see him as nothing but a forthcoming disaster; or when she willingly throws herself into the jaws of death and lets him suffer anew. The cycle immediately starts all over again when she reaches the climax—fails and dies a thousand different ways—the perpetuity like the broken swing-set upon which she used to push him.

Sometimes, Wanli gives up entirely and dies before even adopting him, at the hands of an alleyway criminal or suicide. But some higher power has given her an abundance of second chances to make things right. Far too many. She will never know for sure what "it" is; she's not sure she  _wants_  to know. The woman can only attest to her repeated punishment and the havoc wreaked upon her psyche.

In every life, he will let her down, but disappointing herself? That, too, is just as cruel. So when the light at the end of the tunnel pulses, rupturing the false stillness, Wanli reaches out like she always does and comes out alive.

* * *

**Foggy Swamp, Southwestern Earth Kingdom. Spring, 98 AG.**

Sunshine attacks her eyes from the canopies, sharp streams of gilded heat between shifting leaves. Wishing to sleep for just five more minutes, Wanli rolls to her side and cozies up to a stalky vine. The movement warrants a yawn that could rival that of a tiger seal. Something mud-baked and putrid reaches her nose, which she scratches irritably with a blunt nail.

 _Oh?_  This is definitely different. She should be waking up in a cramped room somewhere in Ba Sing Se as a bitter and broke thirty year-old. The cabbage merchant hollers out a new deal outside her window, which will shortly be smashed in by a rock. In moments, her childhood friend Engi will crawl through the frame with a bag of stolen vegetables. She proceeds to complain about her unemployment and Republic City's latest trouble with…

"Yoooo, are ya dead?"

That voice… maybe things haven't changed after all…

"Don't kill me off like that, leech," Wanli mumbles.

"How boring. I thought my arch-nemesis was finally felled, but of course you wouldn't go down like that. Maybe I should try to catch a catgator."

Wait, that voice—!

Wanli startles awake, the itch of bark and mosquito finally registering to her senses. She pulls herself upright but stops short of dropping into the green pool below, legs hanging off the base of a fallen willow. A tawny hand presses into her thigh to steady her. When she follows it up the length of limb and torso, the unmistakable eyes of Engi blink back at her. Only, rather than a grown woman, Wanli's friend is a teenager again, gap-toothed and full of admiration.

" _What_ are you wearing?" Wanli asks, face pinching.

"Very funny. The same crap you are, genius."

She moves to scan her own body then, expecting to find long legs and fine cotton. Instead, she is met with a child form only recalled in dreams of better times. A wooden band keeps her breasts bundled up, while a grass skirt tangles around her lower half, feet bare and light russet in the light. This strange outfit…

"Engi?" The sound of her voice is too young, too soft, too undamaged. It knows nothing of war and losing a child.

"Yes, the one and only," the other girl responds.

"How old are we?"

"Uh, fourteen. Did ya hit your noggin' somewhere? My birthday  _just_  happened!"

"Fourteen, fourteen…" Wanli repeats to herself. "That means… Foggy Swamp Tribe?"

"Huh, I've never heard you willingly call it that before." Engi sends her a repulsed but concerned look. She flippantly gestures to the humid environment around them. "Our wonderful 'second' home. Leaf hats. Fish bone stew.  _Insects_."

"And we've been here for a year?"

"I guess? I can't believe you were keeping count."

What is going  _on_? Why is she in the landscape of her childhood, talking to a small Engi so casually? Could she have really hit her head somehow in the afterlife? Where would she have even hit it? She is supposed to be making to-do lists and plotting significant events leading up to the retrieval and development of her son. Something went gone terribly wrong with this reincarnation.

A thought occurs through the confusion. "Has the Fire Nation passed through yet?"

"No," Engi says. "Hey, why are you asking that? And what do you mean by  _yet?_  You're scaring me now. I'm taking you to Old Man Huu for a check-up, pronto."

"Unexpected development," Wanli says under her breath, lost in her own headspace. "I shouldn't be this far back, there's just no way."

The pseudo-immortal is overcome with a sense of dread, gaze growing scared and unfocused. She brings a thumb up to her mouth to bite down on the nail. It is hard enough to produce a red blossom, a familiar taste in an unfamiliar world. This isn't the starting point. This isn't where she's supposed to be. Could this be a new timeline? A new test from the spirits?

Her best friend looks upon the scene in mild distress and waves a very helpful hand across her face. "Hey, are you really not okay? Was it something I said?"

It takes a few moments for the fog to pass, before Wanli jumps up from the toppled tree trunk. She scans for something in the distance, some sign that this could be a trick or dream. The sudden movement sends Engi over the edge and squealing into the swamp water below with a  _sploosh_.

"Pft, bah! What in the— Warning,  _please_ , before you go into one of your weird modes!"

Words of apology or explanation go stale in Wanli's mouth. As if for the first time, she views the enormous roots of the banyan-grove tree spilling into the wet earth. For a split second, she sees its spiritual center glow in broad daylight, pulsing like an organ. And somehow, that is enough to tell her that fate has changed its course; that perhaps, this is her break for freedom.

She begins to laugh, choking up as she does so and reaching a fever pitch. Her heartbeat thrums in her ears to a migraine-provoking ring that seems to grow louder and louder with every breath.

 _I can actually die now_ , she thinks.  _I can actually die in peace._

"This can't be real," she says, voice rising. "You spirits and the games you play with us. You give me him, then you make him rotten, then take him away from me. Ha ha, not this time—!"

Her physical state catches up to her through the hysteria. Wanli dramatically falls from her perch, right next to a shell-shocked Engi, who proceeds to poke her unconscious body with a stick.

 _Very_  helpful.

"A-are you really dead now? Hey…"

* * *

The next time Wanli wakes up, the unique smell of herbs and pulp grounds her existence in this new life, along with the lopsided grin of her adoptive parent Huu. They are in the village now, under the roof of his little hut not far from the main river. She almost tears up at the nostalgic patchwork ceiling, but swallows deeply to stop the onslaught of emotions.

With a wave of his hand, Huu brings over some freshly minced muck to feed her from a boiling cauldron. His waterbending reminds her of a root: deep, careful, and living in the past.

"Heyo, little Wiyo," he coos, happy to see her gag reflex kick in. She downs the food anyway, masking the cringe induced by her childhood nickname  _Wiyo_. It sounds like a separate person, someone gone off to war and never retrieved. The little girl who will never be again. "If you've got enough energy to choke on the daily special, I'd say you're about ready to join the real world."

"How long was I out?" Wanli asks.

"Half a day, gave Engi quite the scare." Suddenly, Huu squints and looks her straight in the rattled face. She makes no move to back up; he can practically  _smell_  fear. "You're politer than usual, did ya see a Fire Nation soldier or something?"

Wanli pushes the leaf blanket from her body to sit up. If she remembers correctly, she and her Northern water tribe companion had been adopted into marshland territory. Orphaned, their poor relatives sent the pair to live with their distant kin, leaving the children to fend for themselves as refugees in a foreign, unkind land.

The girls hadn't taken the change all that well, not until their twenties, when the world was slowly piecing itself back together after the end of Fire Lord Ozai's reign. Even then, they felt no need to return to the North Pole; they would've torn it down themselves if not for its newfound peace with the Southern Water Tribe, the more compassionate clan.

"You're overthinking, pops." Wanli motions for a cup of water, practically inhaling it as soon as the container reaches her hands. "I've never been better."

 _Worse_ , her mind counters.  _What if they know you're a fake? What if they find out what you can do? What you would_   _do for the future?_

The last question stops her in her tracks. What future? The one she's re-lived all these years, or the one of her own making? What is she going to do without a definitive purpose? Without her child?

"If you say so." Huu breaks her thoughts with a sooty hand, running it down her braids, eyes gleaming something fond. "Don't push yourself. I don't want my apprentice to fall apart before she finishes the great art of boat crafting."

She smiles for what feels like the first time in ages, remembering just how calm life was before the war became imminent and irrevocable. Before she learned the fastest way to kill a person was through their own body.

The frown sets in like a deep, sudden bout of food poisoning. "It's not good to be back," Wanli says, without thinking.

"Oddball," the old man jests, seemingly having heard nothing unexplainable. It's just Wiyo being Wiyo. "Care for seconds?"

* * *

On the other side of the world, a boy around the same age loses the battle of his life and feels his heart burn away just as quickly as the skin on his face. The image of his father, basked in fire and shadow, will be forever ingrained into his eyelids. Family becomes an abstract concept on his way to the healers, who have never seen such a terrible mauling of skin.

But he would do anything to be part of one again; even the one that ruined him. That is why he goes on this seemingly fruitless journey in the first place, to capture the most powerful being alive. As he looks over the boat edge, his uncle humming over a cup of jasmine tea beside him, his fury grows into a dark resolution.

 _Father, you_ will  _accept me again. No matter what I must do._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Concepts closely inspired from the songs "Madness" by Ruelle and "Frank's Choice" by Tyler Bates!


	2. Routine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A softer, more nostalgic chapter. Thanks for supporting this story. Let me know what's working and what's not.

"I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people."

—Marian Keyes

The last day of spring feels like a blistering welt, dry to the touch but harboring a deep moisture that threatens to pop the average villager's sanity. After the recent rain, which came down in musty torrents and leveled the local vegetation, the Foggy Swamp Tribe found its nets bursting with water life. For a change of pace from bug dishes, old and young gather outside to prepare the food and spend quality time together.

"Don't you think it's a lil' odd?"

Engi pauses, letting the half-finished weave rest in her lap. She turns to the lead fisherman Tho with a raised brow. He bites into a loaf of glow-fly bread with unfazed enthusiasm.

"What is?"

"Your friend," he presses. His partner Due hums under his breath in agreement.

"What about Wanli?"

"She have a concussion or summin'?"

"I definitely thought that two weeks ago," Engi laughs. "Why? Did she start talking crazy to ya too?"

"Naw, not that. I just don't think she's all there. She seems…  _different_. Not as fun and talkative anymore."

Tho jabs a finger over Engi's shoulder. She follows it to the cleaning and skinning station on the other dock. With long, crude knives made from bog iron, the people dispense the edible parts into reed baskets and chit-chatting about nothing in particular.

Like a sore thumb at the very end, Wanli sits cross-legged and hunched over, staring blankly into dead fish eyes. One hand comes to rest at the gills, while the other traces gentle circles across the sparse scales. Her tools have remained unused for hours and no one has bothered to suggest otherwise.

"So she's a little slower than usual," Engi concludes, resuming her work. "I don't like gutting fish either, but nobody's calling me absent."

"That's 'cuz you don't wanna hear 'em—"

He gets a face full of water for that comment. "You better watch yourself, leaf-brain. I might just cover you in gravy some time and feed you to Slim."

"You wouldn't dare." He shrinks under her gaze nonetheless, huddling behind one of his finished nets. "Slim loves me!"

Due hides a laugh behind his fist. "This here's a loyal friend, Tho, if I ever seen one. Won't let anyone talk smack about Wanli."

"That's right," Engi says. "Who else is gonna stick up for her?"

"I mean," Tho begins, "I would put my money on the lil' lady defendin'  _you_  in the ring, but we all got our prid—"

Another wave comes up over the deck, successfully flattening the man and tangling him in his nets. While Due helps the poor guy up, Engi wipes the sweat from her cheek and steals another peek at Wanli. In a subtle show of concentration, her friend levels two fingers to her collarbone. Miraculously, as if drawn by string, the fish rises into the air and twists once, twice. The magic vanishes as soon as Engi blinks, the scene replaced by a warm conversation between Wanli and the local baker. She rubs her eyes and feels her breath hitch, mouth in a tight frown.

_How did she do that?_

Engi thinks less and less of it when Wanli offers to make minnow balls, her appetite winning over the sudden bout of suspicion.

* * *

Cold. Warm. Good. The water folds into her body like a fine glaze, carrying her down into the brightest part of the swamp. Wanli makes sure to keep it out of her ears as she drifts on her back, eyes tracing one long streak of cloud. Someone is calling her name, making a scene on the river bank, but she ignores them. Let the idleness of a summer day consume her.

In her reverie, she barely dodges the cannonball, twisting to the left at the last second like a wolf bat in daylight. Wanli freezes the liquid beneath her and sits back on her haunches. After the splash settles, Engi resurfaces on a passing slab of wood, braid coming undone as she laughs into oblivion.

"Your reflexes are still as sharp as ever," the girl says.

"You call that a sneak attack?" Wanli flicks her forehead, earning an indignant squawk. "What are you going to do when the bad guys actually show up? Play dead possum chicken?"

She almost regrets asking that question, feeling its truth weigh on her, but she shakes it off for Engi's sweet pout.

"You keep saying that, but we're safe. The tribe's too far away from civilization. Why would the Fire Nation come here? Unless…" She pushes off the wood and climbs onto the ice, getting up close and personal with her friend. "Can you see the future?"

Wanli blinks, and like the mystery she is, smiles and leans in closer.

"Yes," she answers. "Do you want to know what I see right now?" When Engi tilts her head, wanting in on the secret, Wanli continues the mischief.

"Not enough room on this ice for the two of us."

With that the girl pushes, sending the other flying back into the water. They proceed to fight for dominance, their giggles ringing over the river as the evening falls upon their childhood.

* * *

"I love you," a gray-haired woman says. The child in her arms squirms, batting her hands away from his face. "I really love you."

"M-mom, you're  _sooo_  embarrassing!"

"I  _exceedingly_  love you."

"Lo…" The boy fidgets, apple cheeks matching the shade of her crimson blouse. "I love you too, I guess."

"Aw, that's my little lover!"

" _Fighter_ , mom. I'm a soldier."

As she lifts him into the air, laughing through his squeals, her eyes alight with a joy like no other.

"You'll always be my little boy," she says.

…

The human mind will remember; it will remember and  _hurt_.

Leaf sheets crumple helplessly between copper fingers. Fixed in the past, Wanli loses herself and wakes in feverish sweat. The dreams have grown more frequent and realistic; most days, she's thankful to have at least two hours of sleep.

When she leans her head against the wall, the drum music vibrating through the wood calms her. Wrapping a blanket around herself uneasily like a stillborn, she peeks out the window and watches the tribe's autumn festivities kick off.

No one bothered to wake her up—typical. Wanli pulls a disgruntled face before smiling.

Tonight, lanterns made from fruit husks generously line the docks, bringing the people home after a long day. The swamp skiffs* are decorated and strung together with purple vines and golden flowers. Mushroom broths, gamey appetizers, and sweet wine are served by the dancers. Huu can be heard singing poorly to an Earth Kingdom melody, as Engi beats her drum and the children tag each other with water.

After only a few weeks, Wanli has surprisingly fallen back into the routine of her first life. Baking slime cakes, swamp skiing, picking roots, basking in sunlight, always being frustrated by people. She remembers how much she cares for them, how uncomfortable it is to love these people as much as she loves her boy. She's afraid of this peace—of living without knowing what's to come.

Though she tries to forget her trauma, Wanli cannot help the flashbacks. They come to her when she rests, in the middle of work, and sometimes all at once: a world filled with government upheaval, spiritual chaos, and war. The sounds of happiness outside have nothing to do with the time-traveller; it feels wrong to exist before her son does, be happy without him.

And then there's the  _blood_ , hot and dense in her veins. It thrums through her with the enthusiasm of a jackhammer, the mania beckoning to her from beyond the skin. She can ignore it when she concentrates on other people, memorizing the way each body carries itself, but that only keeps the impulses for so long. The fish was an accident. She was careless, had forgotten her surroundings and risked witnesses, but the call of the void grows with each day and she has to satisfy it.

If her memories would follow her until the end of time, the bloodbending would too. While she was no Hama or Yakone, the founders themselves, they all shared the insanity in common.

She remembers the exact moment she tapped into the ability: Republic City, seventh or eighth life, self-defense, full of guilt. In her thirties, a dog attacked her in an alleyway near the hospital she worked at, biting her calf hard enough to draw red. With the swing of her hand, Wanli moved it into the wall, feeling before hearing the  _crack_. After the canine was wheeled into emergency care, she could barely register the other healers over the roar of adrenaline, as they flanked her sides with concerns and questions.

She hadn't killed the animal, but the door to madness opened all the same when she twisted its body and flung it against the bricks. The fluorescent lights glared down at her in judgment, casting a shadow over an expressionless face. Underneath the flesh, the mother felt the newly-charged blood tar her thoughts and throw her down the road to no return.

This body hasn't reached that scene yet—it will surely never happen again—but Wanli will always know it by heart. In an attempt to control herself, she sneaks out into the night to her secret cove for training and meditation, slinking through the backdoor like a cat and hiding away from the lantern light.

As soon as the swamp water gets too dense to wade through, she lifts her bare feet up and onto the murky surface. Meeting no resistance, she walks across the water like a haloed hallucination. The moon sweeps through the trees, striking her hair and shoulders with an electric blue. And like moths to a flame, the creatures of the night flock to the girl, from giant flies to screaming birds with their mottled, bulbous bodies.

When she looks upon them, cobalt eyes concerned but inviting, they eagerly follow the traveller to her destination. A winding green river flows through muddy banks and leech deposits to reach a small graveyard, buried beyond a curtain of vines. It parts on cue for the group to slip past. Here, the wind doesn't linger and dust settles over the past. This place was here long before the tribe had settled, hosting the unlucky souls that had traveled too deep into the swamp to ever leave again.

Despite herself, Wanli smiles and inhales, deeply: death. She is far more comfortable here than in the village, where she must pretend to be someone worthy of life. On a mangled stump, she sits and pinches her dark hair into a bun. She has to do this right—no casualties, just good old-fashioned exercise.

"Where are you?" Wanli asks, bracing herself. She draws her chi to her core and flexes her fingers. "Where are  _we_?"

 _ **We are not out there**_ , a revolting voice answers.  _ **We are in**_ **here** _ **.**_

If this were the first time, she would've startled; but just like conflict, she has grown used to the trespassers in her mind.

The girl waves her left hand, making every creature present dance to a soundless tune. Their bodies writhe and still, writhe and still. As she turns the animals like clockwork, Wanli wonders if they experience the same acute fear people do. The kind that bogs down the soul in the middle of the night, an unwanted guest that intrudes upon the party of life and threatens death. She wonders if they know, every time, that they've willingly walked into the hands of a murderer. With their innocent eyes turned up to the moon, it's almost like they think she is an old friend.

 _Why don't they run away?_  Wanli thinks.  _Run, damn you, RUN._

_**Because they trust you.** _

She plays an excellent conductor to the dark thoughts. Right fingers tap along the air like a mechanical pulse beating to the perfect song. Slowly, Wanli turns them just so, her hand straight and tall with the thumb facing her, as if to halt the world. When she raises her limb, the animals also lift from the water and trees; and by the other hand's command, they levitate in a slow ellipse over the nameless headstones.

_**That's right. Good girl. Remember us and how good it feels.** _

The girl takes a good look into the eyes of one mouse, staring back at a distorted image of herself. Dangerous and empty, like a sea dragon consuming the waves. Surely, if she reaches her brown hands out, the reflection would grow fangs and pull her under, once and for all.

_**Finish it.** _

_No!_

One second of hesitation is all it takes to break the spell. At the last moment, Wanli refused to close her hands into fists. She remembers distantly that in her first and only moral life, the healer she had been would've never learned to bloodbend; she would've never killed another living thing,  _just because_. The animals are dropped gently to the earth and promptly scatter, and finally, her legs give out.

"No," Wanli repeats. "No casualties. Not this time."

Touched in the head. Impulsive. Idle. Remorseless. The original Wanli, at age fourteen, had been kind and sensitive; the current one plays in graveyards and can't keep herself in line.

 _In a perfect world, this ability wouldn't exist_ , she thinks, picking herself back up.  _In a perfect world, I wouldn't either._

She doesn't commit now, but will she try again? Will she reclaim her sins?

Something nips at her heels without malice when the girl exits. Wanli looks down to see the village catgator Slim and the rest of the swamp creatures gather again. They are shaken and heaving, ruffled and skittish, but still swarm to her darkness.

"I'm not your friend," Wanli says, backing away and avoiding their warmth. It's like  _she_  had been the one lifted from the ground and twisted at the hip, not them. Without looking back, she flees from the area and propels herself through the muck, face in hands to keep her skull from splitting open.

She hates how they trust her, how they  _forgive_  her. The dog came back to lick her hand too. She hates how they won't run away, because given this new chance at life, she plans leave and never go back.

_Never adopt and love him. Never try to change the future again._

Upon returning to the village, she stiffens at the appearance of Huu. He sits at their doorstep, fiddling with a pile of lanterns and an old pipe. The festivities are long over and the girl wracks her brain for an explanation, but comes up short. He's always waited for her return, but not like this; not after a bloodbending session.

 _Accept the change_ , Wanli reassures herself.  _Adapt to it. He still loves you._

"Heyo Wiyo, what's cooking?"

Wiyo. Still little Wiyo to him, even though he must see that something is off about her, more broken than before. The teen can't beat him, so she joins him. "Midnight stroll."

"You get anything to eat?"

"No appetite."

"Of course not, you kept napping the day away and missed my fabulous singing."

"Shouldn't you be in bed? It's getting late, old man."

"Waiting for my other daughter to get to bed before I do. The mosquitoes get nasty at this hour, was worried they'd eat you alive."

"I'm sure they're eating you from the inside out right now, you kook."

Huu giggles to himself, rattling in his bones. Wanli watches him work to untangle the lanterns in warm silence—she almost wants to tell him who she really is—a haze falling around their weariness like a blanket of starlight. Instead, she grabs a string and takes up the task with him, saving that conversation for another time. The water sloshing around their feet seems to be in their ears, waxing and waning.

They used to do this frequently, now that Wanli thinks about it. Side by side, under some terrible light source, working on crafts or recipes. Self-proclaimed master and apprentice. The closest thing she has to a parent in this foggy world; the closest she remembers to being a child again.

"Wiyo," he calls in a different, quieter tone. "Wiyo, I hope you know what you're doing."

Wanli doesn't stop threading, even when her heart goes still.

"Do any of us really know what we're doing?"

She feels him look at her and smile, sadly, like she's going somewhere he can't reach.  _And he can't_ , Wanli confirms, coveting the last shreds of her innocence.  _I won't let him drown with me._

"No, I suppose we don't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Swamp skiff: Foggy Swamp Tribe canoe.


	3. Invasion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is vastly grittier than the previous ones. Would love to know your thoughts, hope you like it!

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

—Vyasa,  _Bhagavad Gita_

_Are the hands of a firebender supposed to feel like ice?_

Zuko thinks about this a lot, as his incessantly kind uncle rubs cold palms between two wrinkled ones for hours, days, weeks. When they aren't pushing the limits with training, they sit like this together on lonelier nights, far from home and lost at sea, with a crew that grows unhappier the deeper into Southern Water Tribe territory they tread.

The teen used to enjoy water, always wished to learn about the tribes that honed an element so different from his own, but he despises the glacial plains now. Other cultures dim in comparison to his search for the Avatar. The world is wide and blue and cold, and Zuko wonder if it is all he'll ever know in his ruined adolescence.

On a misty winter day, jasmine tea has been left to cool on the counter as uncle and nephew squabble for the umpteenth time.

"This is not, I repeat,  _not_  an extended vacation," the teen emphasizes. "I can feel us getting closer to our goal, you'll see."

"You may have taken me out of retirement," the man replies, teasingly, "but you will never intrude upon my relaxation. A man must have his tea time if he is to face his enemy." He blows a long trail of steam through his nostrils at his nephew's disgruntled face, grinning as the youth brushes it off.

Zuko flexes his body against the rail, leaving his uncle to his board games, the energy draining from his dragon spirit. Ice, ice, and more ice; nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Perhaps these two years really have been a mistake, dragging a fleet of worn soldiers on a quest towards nothingness. With exile fresh in mind and phantom pain where half of his face should be, he ages with damage that has been internalized rather than understood, the image of a tyrant father hovering overhead.

But then the blue beam of light shoots into the heavens, the landscape radiating a perceptible, earthly shift. Like balance being restored, breath by breath. The revelation shakes him to the core and thaws his dreams of honor.

"Finally." Amber eyes turn to his uncle with a newfound determination, footsteps light and excited. "Uncle, do you realize what this means?"

The old general peers forlornly at his cards and sighs. "I won't get to finish my game?"

"It means my search... it's about to come to an end."

The prince doesn't know it yet, but as his hands return to their correct temperature, on the other side of the world, a similarly lost soul has a much grimmer vision.

To her, the Avatar is not a cause for celebration, but a reminder of tragedy.

* * *

"Press your fingers here, at the heart. Now pedal the other arm into small circles,  _small._  Good, good. Feel the water in the palm draw from the roots. Keep pedaling."

"Arms don't pedal. Some teacher you're turning out to be."

"Well they do in my head, ya insubordinator!" Engi cries.

"That's not even a word." Wanli rolls her eyes but does as ordered any way. After a year of blending back into swamp life, the girl finds herself at the mercy of Engi's boredom. While she had honed her waterbending for combative use long ago, she lacked the gentle hand and patience for plantbending.

Hence, the two girls find themselves practicing atop some of the hundreds and thousands of shelf-stairs circling the thick, ancient trunk of the banyan-grove tree. However, the moment Wanli channels even the slightest bit of water into a willow sapling, it literally  _shatters_ , ribbons of green and brown released from seemingly the depths of the underworld. In the background, Engi screams about how she isn't "pedaling hard enough" and "that was my favorite baby!"

"I tried. You tried." Wanli brushes her hands together. "I can't plantbend and that's final."

It's the truth, given her dangerous fighting style. Punch, slash, collapse: the same militaristic waterbending that got her son out of prison and saved her from many a battle. Unconventional, rigid,  _murderous_. Excellent bloodbending-material. She shakes her head to stop the intrusive thoughts, grounding herself in the moment.

 _You're not there,_  she reminds herself for the umpteenth time.  _You're not there anymore. You finally have a chance at living, don't mess this up_.

"Fine," Engi says. Pouting, she plops herself down and lifts a basket into her lap as her friend swings onto a higher platform for meditation. "I throw in the towel too, for now. But this isn't over, young grasshopper. We'll make a master out of you yet."

"Yeah, yeah," Wanli replies.

As a comfortable silence settles over the two, she has time to observe her friend. The other waterbender's face has grown more heart-shaped and pleasant to Wanli's oval one, brown hair folded into traditional braids. Even their skin is different, the former's tawny and fine and the latter's deep and uneven. They call Engi pretty down in the village; they call the bloodbender empty behind closed doors. Her pseudo-family pretends like the rumors don't exist, but the worried looks sent her way are hard to miss.

"Is there something on my face?" Engi breaks her trance, looping one reed through the other.

"No," Wanli says. "I just think you've gotten exceptionally ugly this past year."

"Ruuude," Engi drawls. "Is that the best you can do?"

"I kid, I kid. You're beautiful, love. What's your skincare routine?"

"Mud and wood frog secretion." The girl pats her face for good measure and turns her nose up in the air. "Works miracles on my boils."

"Beating drums made you soft enough to play with vines and frogs, huh?" Wanli asks.

"And you're clearly as hard-headed as the day we came here."

"Punk."

"Grub."

Wanli bursts into laughter, unrehearsed for once; she missed this, whether admitted or not. Some things will never change. "That's a new one."

"I have to catch up to you somehow." Engi shrugs.

 _I have hundreds of years over you,_ the other girl muses.  _Don't take it to heart_.

"Plantbending is uncommon and creative," she actually says. "Takes a special kind of care and prowess."

"Finally, some respect around here!" Engi dips her head in a bow, adding a flower to her own hair. "Thank you, thank you. One gold piece per autograph."

For the next hour, they work on their individual tasks of creating and training. Peacemaker, warmonger: the contrast is stark, but fails to separate the childhood friends. They were cut from the same blue cloth, a cold continent away.

"Do you miss it?" Engi sets down her finished basket. The sunlight has shifted into a mute lemon, the day beginning to break down. "The North?"

Wanli clasps her hands together, as if in prayer, dark eyes opened to stare ahead and deliberate her response. She knows their current world of foliage and scales more than she remembers her homeland of ice and fur. It used to come as a surprise, the idea that she could no longer picture where she'd been born or the faces of dead siblings and birth parents gone off to war. The spirits that once led her into the snowfall to make angels also evaded her memory.

No spirits will come to her now; they must know she has strayed from the light.

"I can't miss a place I no longer know," Wanli finally says. Engi nods in understanding, knees folded up and face buried in her skirts.

"I wonder if we can ever go back," she says.

"Maybe when we're olde—"

 _Boom!_  The bark beneath their legs trembles, the earth shaking violently a split second later. Hands meet halfway to stabilize the bodies; at a distance, likely right upon the great ocean, a column of light splits the clouds down the middle, puncturing the skies with an array of color. Wanli slowly stands, eyes wide with both elation and fear.

"The Avatar is back," she says, unconsciously. "Was he supposed to come back so soon?"

Engi gives her the most mystified, eyebrow-risen look of her life, until the smell of smoke wafts up the world tree in plumes of fury. Without prompting, the girls roll on all fours and peer over the edge, where a group of soldiers, clad in maroon armor and skeletal masks, move around the roots in unwelcome droves. Their helmets bear great red horns Wanli thought she'd never see again.

"Fire Nation," the waterbenders whisper together. With shared looks of anxiety, they slink lower and lower down the platforms while the firebenders march further into the swamp, following them in the shadows.

 _They shouldn't be here in the winter_ , Wanli thinks, counting about thirty troops.  _This is looking uglier by the second._

The Fire Nation would never risk the swamp and its unknown depths, at least not this early in the game. How did they know to get this far? A chill runs down her spine at the idea of the world changing even more; she hasn't even gotten used to her reincarnation yet.

"Nationalist scum," Engi hisses, moving to draw some vines to her core. Her features sharpen in unfamiliar anger. "We have to do something, they're moving in the direction of the village."

Wanli grabs the girl's hand and tugs her into a cluster of leaves; a soldier nearly saw them. "We're outnumbered. Maybe we should return to the village and start evacuating people first."

"No, we got this!" Engi reassures, cornflower excitement in her gaze. "Finally some real action in this place. How should we divide them up? You take left, I take right?"

Deep down, Wanli knows this is a terrible idea, but can't help the rush of adrenaline in her blood. She lets it bubble to the surface and breathe passion into her veins.

 **This year has certainly been too quiet** , insanity insinuates.  **A little fight won't hurt** **.**

"We have to split them up first. Do you see the glade up ahead?" She points and her friend nods enthusiastically. "If you lift those trees back there, they'll become a blockade. Close them in. I'll improvise from there."

"Gotcha." Engi shoots her a conspiratory grin. "It's showtime, sister."

Push and pull, push and pull. The plantbender stretches her arms fully, fingertips pointed forward, and retracts everything in the same movement, kneading the air like a roller on dough. The wind picks up as the tupelo trees* begin to squeeze together. The soldiers cry out in alarm when the trunks finally meet halfway, a great mass of chlorophyll pinched at the roots.

In the confusion, Wanli takes a leap of faith off the platform, landing in the waters near one unsuspecting man. Half-turned and half-stepped back, she sweeps her leg out into a fluid quarter circle, and like she predicted, he and the other soldiers instinctively throw fire punches at the distraction. She extinguishes them with a projectile of liquid and pulls her hands towards her chest with great effort, conjuring the storm.

"We've been barricaded in!" a soldier alerts. "Look out!"

When they look back, the squadron is met with a green wave that pours over them, slamming some unfortunate souls against the wooden wall and carrying others around it, where they lie paralyzed in the reeds and pebbles.

"Ambush! Fire at will!"

Engi's laughter hits the air, and like a black widow casting its line down, she wraps a vine around the neck of a female firebender and pulls,  _hard_. The woman goes crashing unpleasantly into the ground as Wanli plays dirty and throws mud into another guy's eyes.

"You take left, I take right?" Engi suggests again.

"You're right, so I left."

"All right, show-off. Fireball approaching fast!"

The girls keep the battle going long enough to let their momentum establish, moving dually in their circle as the remaining ten soldiers dance to their death tango. While the long-ranged Engi whips out from a distance, rarely using the water at her feet but rather drawing from her speciality in the wildlife, Wanli fights up close and personal.

She probably broke a jaw on the last strike, dredging the river water into her palm and raising it to the opponent's mouth, only to impact the bone with ice at the last second. She thinks, distantly, that the sounds of combat suit her more than the festival ones; it brings a feral smile to her face, one that covers up her fatigue. She's gotten rusty, the specificity of her hand-to-hand combat expending far too much energy for her liking.

"Ungh!"

"Gah!"

The teen kicks the last female firebender so hard in the cheek, the head nearly flies off with the teeth.

"Forget that one! All remaining troops, advance on the plant girl!"

And like that, the teamwork spell ends. Wanli looks up in alarm as three men convene on Engi, standing toe to toe and spreading a thick wave of fire over the water and plants. They respectively boil and crumble, the girl biting back a pained cry, cornered. The river dries up at her feet, draining her of the last potential escape route.

The tallest soldier kicks at her head, and when she dodges, he brings down his fire-bladed fists. Her next dodge becomes the greatest mistake for everyone there. A ringlet of red and orange flies out from behind the man, who has long ducked now, drawn from the breath of a second firebender. Engi can only close her eyes and wait for it to connect.

But it never does. She blinks back the tears; like a geyser, Wanli has absorbed the impact in front of her. Immediately, the smell of burning flesh assaults the area.

"W-Wanli!"

The said youth sports a sizzling wound spreading from the left side of her jawline to the right crease of her collarbone, wrinkled and raw and  _permanent_. Feeling everything and nothing all at once, Wanli sets two trembling fingers to the injury and scoops up the dribbling blood spotting her chestplate. There is less pain and more of an ugly,  _giddy_  sensation, like a key has been turned between her ribs and opens a forbidden door.

"You…" She points calmly at the soldier—no, the  _boy_ —and steadies her breath. It almost comes out in frosty puffs, as though they are truly treading on the thinnest ice.

 _ **They will wish they were under it**_ , her demons say.  _ **They will wish they were**_ **dead** _ **, too.**_

Wanli raises the same hand and waves deliberately, confidently. Like the animals in the graveyard, the human loses control of his body, screaming and twisting in the confines of his veins. His boots barely touch the water, legs kicking and convulsing. The remaining soldiers watch on in terror, too astonished by the witchcraft to move. Engi can barely fill her lungs with air, pressing herself into the corner.

_**Circle, circle, little fire-man. Twist and turn!** _

The skull mask slips from his face, revealing a fear-stricken expression, brown eyes pleading for dear life. He fails to utter a sound as Wanli suspends him in air and straightens her fingers. Someone tries to lunge at her, to take her down by the knees, but she simply knocks her head in the same direction, the indirect command sending the person flying with a sharp  _gush!_

 _ **Just like we practiced**_ _,_ the voices urge.  _ **You can do this. What is one soldier's life?**_

"P-Please! He's only following orders!"

"He's got a family!"

Oh, they've simply  _ruined_  the moment now, asking her to tap into a conscience that isn't there. Doesn't  _want_  to be there, not when the blood is so dense and alive.

"And he hurt mine," she says, mostly to herself. "Besides, he chose to be a fighter, just like I choose…  _this_."

She steps forward, seeing a familiarly distorted Wanli in her victim's gaze, and finally accepts the other side, closing the fist and slamming it into her free palm. Hesitation, no more.

A sickening  _crunch_  resounds; the man's spine has been effectively cracked under the pressure. The agony is endless, felt in the hearts of all present. Even in innocent Engi, who never found compassion for firebenders until now. Wanli drops the newly disabled soldier, both strangely uplifted and ready to vomit. The bile fails to rise though, just as the man fails to die.

Running, running, running away. The footsteps grow farther and farther away, less life to be aware of, less life to be taken. Distantly, she follows their bodily fluid too until it fully disappears from the vicinity. Long after the firebenders have collected their troops and escaped the bloodbender, after the sun begins to fall from its golden throne, the girls remain in the dreadful silence of the swamp.

Wanli makes the first move towards her friend, whose face has refused to shift from its horror. In a ragdoll-like trance, the former brings a ball of water between her hands and to Engi's cheek, where a long gash begins to heal in an ephemeral glow; all the while, the flinching patient stares at the other girl's blistering burn. She can almost feel it herself, neglected and carved into bone. Her heart pounds in her ears, surely producing cold, rancid blood, as an irrevocable shiver runs through her system.

At the end of the process, Wanli stands against the setting sun, expression shadowed and unknown, and never looks back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tupelo: type of swamp tree.


	4. Loyalty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends, it's been a while since I've updated. School caught up to me and I had a hip injury at the end of this semester, which didn't help the writer's block at all. However, I'm hopefully back for the long-term with much improved content. Wanli is turning out the way I want her to finally, so I'll be back with another update soon featuring the Gaang and more Zuko. As always, thank you for the continued support and be an active reader!

"The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most."

—Lillian Smith,  _Killers of the Dream_

The rain is an unwelcome traveler begging for food and drink, knocking on the door to her heart. But Wanli is not there; she is cut open and ruptured, the fingers of madness stabbing her wounds. The burn she sustained from battle, now a mottled scar, feels like a canyon, like a good chunk of her has been torn back to reveal a festering hatred.

She has broken many bodies before, but this time is different. The aftermath of her bloodbending is prolonged, mind eclipsed by a bout of antipathy. As she follows the central river out of the swamp, the girl hears the fiendish whispers surface in her mind.

 _ **You left witnesses**_ , they insinuate.  _ **Sloppy work. Should have tied up the loose ends.**_

"I shouldn't have done it in the first place," Wanli hisses back, clutching one side of her head. "Leave me alone."

 _ **You let us in**_ , they laugh.  _ **Open the door, invite in some more.**_

She ignores the way her body protests, one foot in front of the other and seeking the world outside the swamp: the greater Earth Kingdom. Having traveled several days without rest, she isn't sure how much further it will be until the nearest town appears. Hopefully a sea port, if she remembers her maps correctly.

In her misery, Wanli plays back the fight frame by frame, mourning the soldier she ruined. Did it happen at all? Had any of this happened? How could she lose her temper like that and cripple a man? Regardless, there is no turning back. She has to get out of here, out of sight; her abilities are more volatile than anticipated, years of mastery uncontained within this child's body.

Her vision begins to blur with suspended tears at the thought of leaving her family behind, but she practically rips the fluid from her eyes with the wave of a hand. The Foggy Swamp would be fine; Huu and the others were more than capable. Wanli commends the firebenders for having gotten as far as they did. The average person usually lost their sense of direction—or their minds—to the plant life and animal sounds, screeching and hollering, driving nails into the neck. No doubt, those who got out of the fray unscathed won't be trying again any time soon.

But the premature mobilization of the Fire Nation against a small, relatively untouchable corner of the world like the swamp truly sets off her alarms. Why had they come into the swamp in the first place? Who sent them? Were they looking for something?

In any case, there are more pressing issues at hand than analyzing history. The sloshing of water behind her gives it away; someone is hot on her tail.

Without wariness—it amuses her, really—Wanli pretends to be oblivious and lets the person stay in hiding. Inherently knowing they are not here to fight, she casually kindles her fires and resupplies the four pouches of dried herbs at her hip. The harder survival tasks are separating mud from freshwater and driving ice picks into the hearts of possum chickens.

After four nights of no sleep, the human body will begin to experience a decrease in oxygen intake, faster heart rate, and hallucinations. Wanli notes these symptoms in her pursuer, counting down in her head the precise moment when—

 _Thud._  There it is, the fainting spell. Wanli approaches the figure, eyes alight with exasperation. Lying in the reeds, Engi breathes shallowly, body sprawled in the dark waters. She could never go that long without rest, having attracted a leech or two on the trek, if the suction marks on her legs indicate anything. Cautiously, Wanli carries the girl to her campsite, bridal-style, pushing the hair affectionately from a feverish temple.

After setting her down and getting a fire going, the girl considers their current predicament. Her plantbending friend was never supposed to see the cruelty of bloodbending first-hand. She also never left the swamp this soon. The girls were meant to meet in Ba Sing Se under a great autumn sun and rekindle their friendship.

An older Engi would bring mooncakes and teach her son paper crafts, visit every New Years and catch fireflies for their lanterns. They visited the Air Temples annually to pay their respects, some of Wanli's fondest memories with her best friend and child. In this life, these pure events would surely never happen again.

At the crack of dawn, Engi finally wakes up to the smell of roasting fly, noting that they are almost out of the swamp.

"How long was I out?" she calls, voice hoarse and unfamiliar.

"A day," Wanli replies. "The Su Ming Pier is coming up ahead."

"What? Are you trying to catch a boat?"

"Nice observation."

"Don't be smart with me," Engi snaps. "You need to go back."

It takes everything in her not to flinch as Wanli stills, face turned away. Hands cease in their flame stoking, glimmering with what appears to be crystallized sweat. The beads become liquid again at the shake of a wrist.

Engi shivers at how far her friend has honed waterbending. No wonder plantbending never worked out during their training; Wanli never had the intention of being gentle. In the firelight, her body is leaner and meaner, a violent anomaly whose mysterious motivations continue to haunt Engi.

"Go back? To what?" Wanli sighs, rubbing her temple. "There's nothing left for me in this swamp. I've prepared a travel pack for you, so head out as soon as you feel better. You know your way back without me."

That hurts more than Engi cares to admit.

"You don't get to decide that," she says.

"And  _you_  do?" Wanli feels her irritation spike, setting down her food.

"Why did you kill him?"

"I didn't—"

"The man's as good as dead!" Engi interrupts. "He might have been from Fire Nation, but no one deserves… deserves whatever  _that_  was!"

After regaining her nerve, the girl begins to cry. The grief finally catches up with her post-fatigue.

"What would you have had me do?" Wanli asks. "Let him burn you? Let him hurt my family? We're at war and it's reached the swamp now. I'm not going to justify what I did."

When Engi finally controls her sobbing, she looks up at Wanli and blanches at what she sees. "W-what did you do to your hair?"

"Is it already turning white?"

To answer her own question, Wanli rips a few strands from her head without batting a lash and inspects the change. Indifferently, she lets the hair fall away like fine spider thread, sinking into the damp earth below. This has happened in every life, after all. She never expected to retain the beautiful dark brown color so characteristic of the Water tribes. It was a blessing that her hair had even held up this long, her body physically fifteen but weighed down by the stress of too many lives.

The pair sits in silence, separate revelations striking them.

"I've known you my whole life," Engi finally starts, "but I've never seen you hurt someone so badly before. What am I missing?"

"Nothing," her friend answers. "I'm just not who you think I am."

"Then what did you do to her? To my best friend?"

This warrants no response, to which the plantbender scoffs.

"Nobody changes overnight."

"It can't be change if it's in my nature."

As if to prove a point, Wanli begins to circle a hand in front of Engi's face. Slowly, and to the latter's horror, her tears are lifted from her cheeks, then plucked from her eyelids one by one. They swing overhead in circular fashion, and with two hands now in a squeezing motion, Wanli forms needlepoints of salt, close enough to flesh that Engi begins to panic, her heart jumping up into and clogging her throat.

They rain down...

" _Don't!_ "

...like the fine droplets of sadness they originally were, framing the frightened waterbender's temple and mixing with her sweat. Wanli smiles, almost cruelly, and returns to work.

"I let her die," she says. "I let your little Wiyo die."

As Engi proceeds to pass out again, the bloodbender decides that this is the cost of her sins. Not the voices, not the white hair, but Wiyo and her own happiness. When this dawns on her, the voices fade a little, into the smoke rising from the fire.

 _ **We are here and we are here to stay**_ , they promise in her dreams.

* * *

From child to fisherman to merchant, news of Avatar Aang's return makes its way to the lone Fire Nation ship. At the start of dinner, the chef brings in the best fish this side of the coast, setting it down on the birchwood table.

"Sir." A soldier bursts into the room and salutes his commander. "We've just received word that the Avatar is on Kyoshi Island."

"The Avatar's on Kyoshi?!" The prince jumps from his seat, eyes alight with enthusiasm. He motions for the guards to clear the table, robes flaring at the movement as he heads for the door. "Uncle, ready the rhinos. He's not getting away from me this time."

Iroh watches on quietly, taking his sweet old time. He sets his chopsticks down and points at the dish in front of him. "Are you going to finish that?"

His nephew is quick to act and snatches up the plate.

"I was going to save it for later!"

The retired general rolls his eyes, crossing his arms and pouting at the loss. Couldn't the Avatar wait just this once? That looked like good catfish!

* * *

"You didn't have to send me off."

"I'm not." Engi finishes sewing the leather satchel, making eye contact and biting off the end of the thread extra aggressively. "We're two or none."

Wanli feels her eye twitch at the response; what a brat. After many tears, "I'm your family" insistence, and mudball fights, the pair have reached Su Ming Pier in one piece. The afternoon is fresh and bright, sparkling against the seawater and bouncing off of neatly thatched roofs.

Efficiently, like they so often did back in the swamp, the girls split up to sell and barter goods, occasionally reconvening to discuss their spoils. With a masterful hand and an eye for textiles, Engi procured some basic Earth Kingdom garments for them: jade shirt-robes, ash khakis, and reed-woven sandals. Wanli's burn has been successfully wrapped in bandages, wooden armor and grass skirts traded in for regular clothing.

"Does it hurt?" Engi finds herself asking.

"Not as much now," Wanli replies.  _Thanks for still caring_ , she fails to say.

Now that she thinks about it, this is the first time Engi has traveled this far from home. Aside from being dropped off as swamp refugees, the pair have lived away from ice and snow long enough. Today marks the first day the waterbenders are out of marsh territory and properly in the Earth Kingdom, which by the looks of it jars Engi to no end.

"I can take care of myself from here," Wanli says. She cautiously shuffles the satchel onto her good shoulder and throws supplies haphazardly into it, ready to embark on a new journey.

"You might be scarier now," Engi begins, "but I'm doing this for old Huu. He would talk my ear off knowing that I wasn't there for you—whoever you are."

"Just hit me already. I'd rather lose a tooth than listen to this."

"Stop that! Take me seriously for once!"

"You aren't coming, we've already discussed this."

"And like I said," Engi presses, "you don't get to decide that. If you're not coming back with me, then tough luck talking me out of leaving you."

Tired in both body and soul, Wanli doesn't even try to fight back. Perhaps having another person wouldn't be so bad; and where she's going, family would be quite nice. Regain some sense of belonging.

She continues walking. "All right, but it's not my fault if you cry again."

Engi catches up in a few steps, putting some distance between them but still walking side by side.

"Shut up, I only teared up twice!"

As they finish checking off on their groceries, the girls make their way to the main attraction: the ferries. But upon arrival, there are no boats in sight and only people hustling and bustling, coins clanging and voices clambering. Engi looks on in mild confusion and pulls Wanli to the side, away from prying eyes.

"Where are we exactly going?" she asks.

"Kyoshi Island," comes the response.

"The woman warriors? Why?"

"What you don't know won't hurt you."

 _Punch_. "Tell me," Engi seethes. The expression on the plantbender's face could put a forestfire to shame.

"I—" From the corner of her eye, Wanli sees a figure snag a woman's pouch and run away. Neglecting her friend's fury, she steps to the side to avoid any stray eyes and gets a clear angle of the thief. Raising her hands to her core, she imagines pulling his blood to her like one would reel in rope, feeling the feverish fluid of a chase settle in her palms.

Behind her, Engi watches in amazement as the man stops in his tracks and begins to walk backwards, veins straining in his neck. Soon, a pair of security guards sweep by the girls to apprehend the robber, who starts to yell profanities and something about a spirit possessing him.

"Why did you do that?" Engi asks, watching the scene unfold with pensivity.

"It got you to quiet down, didn't it?" Wanli dodges the punch to her head without looking. "Hey, I just thought it was something you would do."

Engi stills, confused. "What are you saying? Stop pulling my leg."

"I need a quiet place." The other girl changes the subject. They wander over to a stack of crates, sitting down and speaking in hushed tones. "For my head."

"For your head?"

"Like you've seen with my hair, there are consequences to my abilities. Nobody who bloodbends gets out untouched."

"Bloodbending?" Engi feels sick. "You can manipulate someone's  _blood_?"

"I wish I could explain it in more depth, but I'm at as much of a loss as you are. There are no books on it, so the only concrete way to keep myself from going insane has been to practice it, give in to the voices for just a little while. But..."

Wanli rubs her face. Everything inside of her screams for silence, for her evils and problems not to bleed out, but here, she is twisting the knife further in.

"I think they  _are_  me," she presses. "I'm a lost cause, and that's why I had to leave the swamp. I'm dangerous like this. I heard from a vendor that Kyoshi has been uninvolved in the war for years. The Fire Nation is unconcerned with it. If we can get there, I can stay away from situations that would provoke the blood. Start fresh. Live a quiet life."

With a renewed sense of purpose, Wanli holds Engi's shoulders and forces eye contact. "I need you to trust that I mean no real harm. I stopped that man to prove to you that I still have some control. I know it's a lot to ask, and I know you'll never see me the same way again, but I really didn't mean for any of this to happen. I might be broken, but I don't intend to be a liability."

When their eyes meet, Engi is astonished by the sincerity and desperation, by how different yet familiar that cobalt gaze is. Her best friend endures; and for reasons beyond herself, Engi wants to fall into this person, but she holds back before the emotions win over reason.

"No," she finally says, leaving Wanli miffed. "I can't fully trust you yet, but I can't give up on you either. We're practically sisters. If I stay with you, can you promise me something?"

"Anything."

"No killing." Engi raises her pinky, face set in determination. "No killing, unless you absolutely have to. Huu taught us that all creatures are worthy of life. We must honor that."

Wanli meets her head-on, threading their fingers into a promise.

"No killing," she repeats, standing at her full height and bringing her friend with her. "Now, we have a boat to catch."

"Right. Well, since we both know I'm the silver tongue, I'll do the talking." When the other girl raises a high eyebrow, Engi scoffs. "Relax, I only bite when provoked."

In the end, she gets her way, batting her eyelashes at the head poncho and his fisherman when it's their turn in line. Wanli makes an indecipherable gagging sound and receives an elbow to the gut. This day has been way too long.

"Hello boys," Engi coos. "We're looking for a ride to Kyoshi Island. I have some unattended business with my uncle Jo."

"Gee, I'm sorry little lady," the one man confesses, scratching his beard. "We've actually got no more availabilities today. Something about the Avatar being seen in the area."

"But that's impossible," she counters. "Nobody's seen him for decades. Who's coming up with these wild rumors?"

Meanwhile, her fellow waterbender freezes, wracking her head for rhyme or reason. If Wanli remembers correctly, Avatar Aang was unfrozen from a southern iceberg by the master healer Katara and her councilman brother Sokka. They proceeded on their journey to the North… had their first pitstop been Kyoshi Island? What exactly are they doing there?

As Engi haggles the captain for more information, Wanli suddenly spots the exact but dangerous entry point they need: out in the open waters, a Fire Nation ship splits the waters with its pitch black hull. From the vantage point of the pier, few people notice it, but the waterbender would recognize a war ship anywhere.

 _It's going in the direction of Kyoshi_ , she thinks.  _There go my plans for peace._

"Engi, let's go." Without warning, she grabs her friend by the wrist and drags her away.

"H-hey! Don't we need a boat?"

"I think I just found it."


End file.
